What happened to Christians under the Nazi Regime? The traditionalists went to concentration camps, many fell away and adopted the Nazi neo-paganism, and some clergy actively supported the Third Reich. From the essay:
[T]he persecution of the Church was camouflaged as “positive Christianity,” which claimed through the use of quotations from the Bible to be fulfilling God’s commandments: “They … [Read more...]

I love my country and several years back I wrote an essay expressing my gratitude to her. It describes immigrating to America when I was a young boy.
"Wake up," my father whispered. "We're almost there."
It was a cold March morning. I was six years old. My family was sailing from The Hague, bound for New York,a single Dutch family aboard a ship crowded with Hungarians in exodus from … [Read more...]

Source: The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment by C.S. Lewis
Highlights:
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good … [Read more...]

Introductory remarks given at the debate held at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
By: Fr. Hans Jacobse
I want to thank the Orthodox Christian Fellowship and the Secular Student Alliance of UMBC for their invitation to debate this evening. I am looking forward to a healthy and vigorous debate that is not only academically interesting, but I think is one of the central questions … [Read more...]

Taken from a lecture by Fr. Josiah Trenham and republished on Mystagogy.
From Mystagogy:
[The following portion of a lecture (all of which I recommend to be read) delivered by the Very Reverend Josiah Trenham in 2007 I found to be a very edifying piece on how Christians can implement at least some of the counsels of St. John Chrysostom into our own lives today. Of course, this is by no … [Read more...]

Fr. Steven Kostoff asks, why wasn't Bp. Job's courageous stand for the truth during the OCA's recent time of trial acknowled at his funeral?
His Eminence, Archbishop Job of Chicago and the Midwest fell asleep in the Lord on Friday, December 18. His funeral services were held in Chicago on December 22 & 23, and he was buried in Black Lick, PA on Saturday, December 26. Thus, we have lost an … [Read more...]

The American Orthodox Institute has published a new paper on Orthodox unity by George Michalopulos that examines the historical usage of the title "metropolitan," the role of the metropolitan in Church administration, and the "crucial" pastoral duty defined in the Divine Liturgy as "rightly dividing the Word of [God's] Truth."
In "E Pluribus Unum: One Church From Many?" Michalopulos takes it a … [Read more...]

Newly elected President Obama, writes John Couretas, Executive Director of AOI in his essay "Obama and the Moral Imagination" frequently makes use of the phrase "common story." This phrase "may sound strange to the ears. But it is impossible to understand the new president unless his brilliant use of narrative is first grasped," Couretas says.
It's a page taken from the Reagan playbook and … [Read more...]

In June, Metropolitan Jonah of the Orthodox Church in America delivered a talk on "Episcopacy, Primacy, and the Mother Churches: A Monastic Perspective" at the Conference of the Fellowship of St. Alban and St. Sergius at St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary. The audio of the talk is available on Ancient Faith Radio along with the other presentations from the conference. The PDF version of … [Read more...]

Jonathan David Price, editor of "The Clarion Review" (published by AOI) wrote the essay "On the Advantages of Dying Young ", that was recently published in First Principles ("the home of American intellectual conservatism").
Price writes: There is so much talk about the advantages of long life nowadays that when confronted with "tragic" young deaths our only response is pity. Obsession with … [Read more...]